EricBoehlert

Because now more than ever. Press Run is my proudly progressive dissection of the political press. And in this crucial election year, I feel like it's more important than ever. Press Run promises fearless media criticism. It will be a community where we'll find fault, sing some praise, and search...

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  • February 6, 2020

With Donald Trump becoming the first American president to be impeached in his first term, while holed up in the White House tweeting endless attacks around the clock like some internet troll, 2019 should have been the year the Beltway media finally shed its signature timidity and forcefully stood up to...

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  • December 31, 2019

The impeachment of Donald Trump was always going to be a messaging war, and on paper it should have been a rout for Republicans. With his Twitter megaphone reaching more than 60 million followers, Trump should have been able to use his uniquely digital White House bully pulpit to sway...

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  • December 22, 2019

The political press corps may have hit peak impeachment failure on Sunday when Meet the Press host Chuck Todd introduced a segment in which voters from a toss-up district in Michigan were interviewed about the House proceedings against Donald Trump. Touted as a way to take the temperature of everyday...

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  • December 18, 2019

Firmly adopting Republican spin as the best way to view the House impeachment of Donald Trump, The New York Times in recent days appears to have forfeited much of its news coverage to the GOP. Adopting Republican talking points that impeachment is “a political plus” for Trump; “risky” for Democrats; that the...

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  • December 16, 2019

Poised to pass two articles of impeachment in the full House this week, Democrats have remained extraordinarily united throughout the process while nearly half the country stands in favor of taking the drastic action of removing Donald Trump from office. Yet press coverage in recent days has suggested (surprise!) that Democrats...

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  • December 15, 2019

A gigantic double standard was on display in The New York Times on Wednesday as the newspaper reported on articles of impeachment brought against Donald Trump. It's a disturbing double standard that revolves around the paper's stubborn refusal to call Trump, who is a congenital liar, a liar. The Times' front-page...

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  • December 11, 2019

Last winter, CNN for weeks stood by its extraordinary and inexplicable decision to hire Sarah Isgur Flores, a career Republican Party operative with absolutely no journalism experience, to be the network’s political editor. A hardcore partisan, Isgur spent her career spinning for Republicans such as Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, and Carly...

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  • December 9, 2019

Extreme times call for extreme measures, but the Beltway press just isn't willing to make that move in the Trump era. As a consequence, the news media fail to accurately capture the radical changes now underway in the country, and how today's Republican Party has become purposefully untethered from reality....

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  • December 8, 2019

With the House Judiciary Committee poised to take up the impeachment baton and hold a new round of public hearings this month, the Beltway press continues to absorb and echo Republican talking points that claim the inquiry isn’t resonating with Americans. Because impeachments aren’t legal proceedings, the messaging wars that surround them...

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  • December 2, 2019

It turns out the media's obsession with the superrich isn't confined to the world of celebrity and entertainment. In politics, the press also seems utterly fascinated with how the 0.1% live, and especially what their political leanings are. For the 2020 campaign, that means a barrage of coverage about what...

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  • November 27, 2019

There's been a complete transformation in how the campaign press covers elections in the last decade, and it's a defining change that's benefiting Republicans, and specifically Donald Trump. The change is in the way the press has dramatically curtailed its coverage of policy and of what candidate agendas look like....

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  • November 25, 2019

Wasting untold time and energy, New York Times newsroom leaders continue to struggle with the not-very-difficult question of whether they ought to refer to Donald Trump as a racist. More than four years after Trump entered our national political conversation by announcing his candidacy for president, the Times still can't figure...

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  • November 24, 2019

Closing the barn door two years too late, the editor of The Hill this week announced that the publication is going to review all the dubious Ukraine conspiracy reporting John Solomon did while he worked there as an executive vice president. We “are reviewing, updating, annotating with any denials of witnesses,...

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  • November 20, 2019

News on Friday that a federal court convicted former Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone on seven counts, including obstruction of a proceeding, false statements, and witness tampering only added to Trump’s woes as the second day of impeachment hearings played out in Washington. Stone’s conviction certainly added to an aura of criminality that surrounds...

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  • November 18, 2019

Republicans proudly advertised their radical ways during Wednesday's impeachment hearings into Donald Trump, wallowing in conspiracies and embracing debunked claims. The question now: How does the Beltway media cover a party that has aggressively removed itself from reality? How does the news business describe and treat a political party that routinely...

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  • November 14, 2019

Four months after the Beltway press badly failed in its coverage of special counsel Robert Mueller's congressional testimony on the Russia scandal, the D.C. press corps has a chance at redemption this week with the first public impeachment hearings of Donald Trump. Hopefully, newsrooms will be up to the important task at...

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  • November 12, 2019

Here’s a quick news quiz: If you were editing The New York Times and advisers to Michael Bloomberg were telling your reporters that the billionaire might run for president, would you run that story on the front page? For how many days in a row? Considering he is the former mayor of New...

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  • November 11, 2019

Will playing whac-a-mole help save the Trump presidency? That's what Fox News and Donald Trump defenders have been reduced to in recent weeks as the White House and its media allies scramble to try to find a coherent defense for his admitted campaign collusion with a foreign power. (This time,...

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  • November 10, 2019

Campaign Action It’s gone from bad to worse: After spending years refusing to call Donald Trump a liar, the press is now toasting his reelection campaign, which is built on lies. “That campaigns are now being fought largely online is hardly a revelation, yet only one political party seems to have...

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  • November 4, 2019

In January 2016, Catherine Herridge, Fox News' longtime chief intelligence correspondent, reported a huge scoop: No fewer than 150 FBI agents were investigating Hillary Clinton's emails and the private server she used while serving as secretary of state. The number, as part of Herridge’s exclusive report based on anonymous sources, was...

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  • November 3, 2019

How do you solve a problem like Sean Duffy? The former Republican congressman, who was hired by CNN to blindly defend Donald Trump while the impeachment process unfolds, is creating problems for the network by constantly fabricating facts and spreading reckless and dangerous conspiracy theories. And yes, he’s only been on the...

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  • October 30, 2019

Nancy Pelosi called the GOP's impeachment bluff this week, and in doing so she completely undercut the “process” attacks they have been making about the House inquiry. Demanding that a formal House vote be held on impeachment, Republicans have insisted the lack of a vote represents a tell-tale sign that...

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  • October 29, 2019

Here we go again: Facebook just became the latest traditional media player to enable the right-wing hate of Breitbart News. Unveiling its news tab initiative last week, on which Facebook is partnering with outlets such as CNN, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, the company also confirmed that...

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  • October 28, 2019

Bullying works. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been on a GOP charm offensive, and it seems to be working for the social media behemoth as it makes its allegiance to the Republican Party more open. In the days preceding his latest testimony before Congress, Zuckerberg had been “hosting a series of...

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  • October 27, 2019

Former Republican Rep. Sean Duffy, recently hired by CNN to be a paid political commentator, can’t stop fabricating facts when he goes on the air. Since making his CNN debut on Sunday, Duffy has lied about the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords. He’s lied about Joe Biden trying to fire a...

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  • October 22, 2019

Page 16 and 649 words. That’s how The New York Times treated the recent news that a years-long State Department investigation concluded there was no systemic or deliberate mishandling of classified information via emails sent to and from Hillary Clinton’s private server while she was secretary of state. The Times covered that...

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  • October 21, 2019

Enough is enough. If there was a tipping point for Donald Trump’s blatant abuse of Twitter with his hate speech, it may have come when he recently posted a series of tweets warning of a second Civil War if he were to be impeached and removed, quoting Pastor Robert Jeffress...

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  • October 20, 2019

Shepard Smith's recent, abrupt resignation isn’t the only crisis Fox News is facing these days. Aside from allegations that conservatives simply will not tolerate any dissenting voices amid a chorus that worships Donald Trump, the right-wing cable news outlet is struggling as it tries to fight the public opinion battle over impeachment....

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  • October 16, 2019

Shepard Smith’s sudden departure from Fox News signaled that the drawbridge has effectively been raised, and all Trump nonbelievers belong on the other side of Rupert Murdoch's cable castle. No longer a place where any serious dissension—or Trump fact-checking—is allowed, Fox News has embraced its core mission of disseminating propaganda. The...

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  • October 14, 2019

Democrats running for president have a new message for the news media: We’re not going to take it anymore. No longer willing to stoically suffer through bad, misleading press coverage, Democrats are borrowing a page from Republicans by going public with their complaints and demanding journalists do better. But unlike Republicans...

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  • October 13, 2019

Democrats running for president have a new message for the news media: We’re not going to take it anymore. No longer willing to stoically suffer through bad, misleading press coverage, Democrats are borrowing a page from Republicans by going public with their complaints and demanding journalists do better. But unlike Republicans...

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  • October 13, 2019

At the outset of his presidency, several major news outlets eagerly and proudly announced that they were going to fact-check Donald Trump's every utterance and document all the misinformation he was spreading. To their credit, news organizations set aside considerable resources to dutifully unpack Trump's “falsehoods,” as the press preferred...

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  • October 12, 2019

Donald Trump lies about everything. So why do newsrooms still assume he's telling the truth, especially when he unveils grand initiatives? On Friday, Trump claimed he had reached a landmark last-minute immigration deal with Mexico, which meant he no longer had to impose the tariffs he had been threatening, part...

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  • October 12, 2019

It's been nearly 100 days since Donald Trump appointed Stephanie Grisham to be the new White House press secretary, and during that time she has refused to hold a single press briefing. Ripping up decades of protocol and giving up on even the appearance of caring about transparency, the White House now...

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  • October 9, 2019

“All right senator, I have no idea why a Fox News conspiracy, propaganda stuff is popping up here,” lamented Meet The Press host Chuck Todd on Sunday morning, trying to get a straight answer out of Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson regarding Donald Trump's widening Ukraine collusion scandal. “I have no idea...

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  • October 7, 2019

“All right senator, I have no idea why a Fox News conspiracy, propaganda stuff is popping up here,” lamented Meet The Press host Chuck Todd on Sunday morning, trying to get a straight answer out of Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson regarding Donald Trump's widening Ukraine collusion scandal. “I have no idea...

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  • October 7, 2019

Donald Trump's stupefying public performances last Wednesday as the widening collusion scandal continued to gain momentum were stunning, even by his erratic standards. Trump uncorked rambling, incoherent, angry, whiny monologues that were filled with lies and rattled conspiracy theories. That's when he wasn't yelling at a Reuters reporter and threatening...

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  • October 6, 2019

Donald Trump's stupefying public performances last Wednesday as the widening collusion scandal continued to gain momentum were stunning, even by his erratic standards. Trump uncorked rambling, incoherent, angry, whiny monologues that were filled with lies and rattled conspiracy theories. That's when he wasn't yelling at a Reuters reporter and threatening...

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  • October 6, 2019

Adopting a warped view of the Ukraine collusion scandal that's engulfing Donald Trump's presidency, The New York Times seems to think that it's Democrats who are caught in a “tricky” political position. The coverage highlights how in moments of Republican crisis, the Beltway press remains oddly fixated on how events...

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  • October 3, 2019
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Adopting a warped view of the Ukraine collusion scandal that's engulfing Donald Trump's presidency, The New York Times seems to think that it's Democrats who are caught in a “tricky” political position. The coverage highlights how in moments of Republican crisis, the Beltway press remains oddly fixated on how events...

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  • October 3, 2019

Openly colluding with a foreign government to dig up dirt on his political opponent, while offering up the assistance of the Department of Justice. Freezing U.S. foreign aid to make sure the overseas dirt gets dug. Hiding transcripts of presidential calls on secret servers in hopes of covering up the collusion. Publicly...

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  • October 1, 2019

Openly colluding with a foreign government to dig up dirt on his political opponent, while offering up the assistance of the Department of Justice. Freezing U.S. foreign aid to make sure the overseas dirt gets dug. Hiding transcripts of presidential calls on secret servers in hopes of covering up the collusion. Publicly...

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  • October 1, 2019

The impeachment battle lines now appear to have been drawn in terms of the unfolding messaging war that will dominate the airwaves for months to come: Democrats are doggedly perusing the checked-out claims of a government whistleblower, while Republicans are lying about everything. That's not an exaggeration. Embracing Donald Trump's signature...

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  • September 30, 2019

The impeachment battle lines now appear to have been drawn in terms of the unfolding messaging war that will dominate the airwaves for months to come: Democrats are doggedly perusing the checked-out claims of a government whistleblower, while Republicans are lying about everything. That's not an exaggeration. Embracing Donald Trump's signature...

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  • September 30, 2019

After some initial hesitation on how to defend Donald Trump from allegations of trying to collude with the Ukraine government to influence the 2020 campaign, when Trump himself had admitted to doing exactly that, Fox News and most of the right-wing echo chamber have rallied around White House talking points....

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  • September 26, 2019

After some initial hesitation on how to defend Donald Trump from allegations of trying to collude with the Ukraine government to influence the 2020 campaign, when Trump himself had admitted to doing exactly that, Fox News and most of the right-wing echo chamber have rallied around White House talking points....

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  • September 26, 2019

Fox News has never cared about having a coherent and consistent message. As a propaganda and disinformation network, it's not Fox News' job to make sense: It's Fox News' job, these days, to cover for Donald Trump. Yet in the wake of the unfolding Ukraine collusion scandal, where Trump has admitted...

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  • September 24, 2019

Fox News has never cared about having a coherent and consistent message. As a propaganda and disinformation network, it's not Fox News' job to make sense: It's Fox News' job, these days, to cover for Donald Trump. Yet in the wake of the unfolding Ukraine collusion scandal, where Trump has admitted...

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  • September 24, 2019

Tapped to handle damage control on the stunning revelation that Donald Trump aggressively tried to pressure a foreign country to dig up dirt on his possible 2020 Democratic opponent, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo engaged in reckless bouts of misinformation during appearances on Sunday morning shows yesterday—and the hosts did...

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  • September 23, 2019